The Kingdom Way: LUKE 6:41-42 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

I want to welcome you in wherever you're joining us from, man.

I'm just glad you're joining us.

If you're here in Holotus or if you're with us online, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here if you're new with us.

And uh man, I just want to shout out our online ministry.

Uh, there are many people who are in San Antonio, they watch online as they're checking us out.

If that's you, I would just encourage you uh to get to one of our venues, Helotus R.

Petrenko.

I'm just gonna ask the people who are here at our venues.

It's worth it to get in person, right?

To come in and be a part of the body.

You're gonna have to like uh clap or something so that they no, I'm not making that up.

Uh I'm just also grateful because there are people all over the place who are not in San Antonio who watch.

Like many of you, I was with extended family celebrating July 4th, and uh I was talking to my nephew, he's going into sixth grade.

I had no idea my nephew Bentley watches online, like all of the time.

You have no idea who is uh tuning in and how God is using that.

And so, man, we're just uh we're thankful for that.

I hope everyone had a wonderful July 4th, celebrating 250 years of this nation.

We should be grateful.

All of us are living out our faith in context.

And part of the context is the nation that you are living in.

I have dear friends, friends that are closer than family, uh, in Haiti.

And we do a lot to support Haiti here.

Uh we give uh thousands and thousands of dollars through the ministry of Metachurch to help over there.

But life is hard right now in Haiti.

It's always hard in Haiti, but right now the country's been overrun by gangs, and that's a context.

They're having to figure out what their faith looks like.

And there are brothers and sisters all over the world who cannot meet like this publicly, they cannot pray publicly, they cannot preach publicly.

That's a context.

So we have a very specific context, we have a lot of freedoms that have cost a lot of people their lives.

And so we thank God uh for this country and for the context we're living out our faith in.

And at the same time, we are walking through Luke, and we are talking about how we can love and appreciate the context we're in, but we also have to have the correct perspective.

And what Jesus is pushing us to in this sermon that we see him preaching in Luke's gospel is that the kingdoms of this world will not last forever.

And so our hope ultimately can't be found in anything in this world.

Our hope is found in the kingdom of God.

Amen.

And Jesus is teaching us if you want to start living in the kingdom of God, you don't have to wait for Jesus to return, and you don't have to wait to die and go to heaven.

You can start living as a part of that kingdom right here and right now.

The sermon is how to live out kingdom values while you're here on earth.

And what we've learned is it's very difficult to do because the values of the kingdom of God are upside down from the kingdoms of earth.

And all of the ways that we have been formed and informed by the world has created these natural gut-level instincts, and Jesus keeps pushing us to go beyond what is natural to us and to trust Jesus' instruction over our instincts.

Last week we spent time just talking about how difficult that is.

Uh, if you're new, one of the things uh that we do at MetaCurch is we don't play games.

So we're not here to play church, put on our nice little Christian happy face.

Uh, we're here to be honest.

Because God can work through honesty.

Change comes through honesty.

If you want to change, God needs access to the real you.

So we're not gonna play games, and we're just gonna say, listen, most of the time for Western Christians, when God's instructions come into conflict with our natural instincts, our instincts win out.

And because of this, because we're inundated by the kingdoms of this world, because we're largely infatuated by the kingdoms of this world, we really struggle to apply these truths to our life and to live in these counterintuitive, counter-cultural ways.

We gave a word to this last week.

We said that Western Christianity is slowly dying through a lack of discernment.

Here's how we define that: discernment is the ability to see reality from God's perspective.

All Jesus is doing in this sermon in Luke chapter 6 is he's going, hey, just so you know, this is how God sees the world.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

This is how God sees your life, this is how God sees success.

And it is upside down from almost everything that we know.

And so if we're going to live the life on purpose and with purpose that God created and fashioned us to live, then we have to be able to see how he sees and discern what he wants for our life.

Here's our key verse from last week, Luke 6, verse 39.

Luke 6:39

Jesus told them a parable.

Can the blind guide the blind?

Won't they both fall into a pit?

Jesus is not here talking about a physical disability.

Blindness is the opposite of discernment.

If discernment is the ability to see reality from God's perspective, then blindness is just simply the inability to see reality from God's perspective.

Now I spent like an hour preaching on that last week.

You can go to YouTube and get all the way caught up, but I need you to know that much because today Jesus is extending this teaching and he's giving us a new metaphor to hang on to.

And what Jesus is going to teach us in this passage, in these verses that we're looking at today, is the greatest threat to discernment.

Last week we said you need discernment and you need to grow in discernment, and discernment is not a magic trick, and discernment is not something that is just for a few super Christians.

Everyone is called to be able to see how God sees and to grow in that, which means you need to be discipled by Jesus, and you need to be discipled by other Christians who are ahead of you in the faith.

And that means you need to be in community with other Christians, and many of you are not, which means you need to join a life team because we work very hard to provide these teams of people meeting out in the community for you to have Christian community where there are people ahead of you that you can imitate, that you can be discipled, that you can grow in your faith to hold you accountable.

And so you need that.

But even if you're doing all of those things, there is still a major threat to your discernment, and Jesus knows that.

And it's why he extends his teaching into verses 41 and 42.

Now, let me just show you that Jesus is extending this teaching.

In verse 41, Jesus says, Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye, but don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye?

Now I draw attention to the eye because Jesus could have said a splinter in their foot, a splinter in their hand, a splinter in their elbow.

He chooses a splinter in the eye, which can we just pause and say, gross.

That is like, it's it's hard for me to preach on this.

I don't like, I don't like things in my eyes, okay?

An eyelash in my eye is like a level nine out of ten emergency for me, okay?

He chose the eye because he is extending this teaching on blindness.

This is all part of the same idea.

And the eye is not about your vision.

He's not saying 2020 vision.

He's not telling you to get corrective lenses.

You have to remember that scripture is written in the ancient Near East.

This is 1500 years before the Enlightenment.

This is a pre-scientific community.

When Scripture talks about your heart, virtually no one back then knew that your heart is what pumps your blood through your veins and arteries.

They're not talking about it scientifically.

They're talking about the seat of your emotion.

When they talk about your stomach, they don't understand all the scientific inner workings of your large and small intestine.

What they are talking about is just kind of your will.

And when it talks about your eyes, they're not primarily thinking about your eyes scientifically as the things that allow you to see visibly, literally in the real world.

It is talking about your perception.

And specific to scripture, it is talking about discernment.

Can you see how God sees?

There are examples of this all over scripture.

I'll show you one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament.

In Psalm 119, verse 18, the psalmist writes this open my eyes so that I may contemplate wondrous things from your instruction.

Psalms 119:18

It doesn't say, open my eyes so I may see, so I may look at the mountains and valleys and rivers and oceans.

Open my eyes so I may contemplate.

This is about perception, this is about discernment.

Jesus in Matthew chapter 6 teaches this the eye is the lamp of the body.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.

But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

So if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness?

This is in a passage where Jesus is talking about being able to see the way of God and walk the way of God, to stay in the light, to stay in revelation.

This is about discernment.

Can you see how God sees?

And so Jesus is going to give us a new metaphor.

Let's focus on the metaphor now in verse 41.

Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye?

But you don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye.

We miss this, uh, especially if you're like over 30 years old, because you grew up watching Jesus movies where the person who played Jesus was just like a robot, you know?

They just kind of spoke very carefully all of the time and were very serious all of the time.

Uh you should come on Wednesday nights uh to the Petrinkle location, to our summer nights, and watch the chosen with us, because no portrayal of Jesus will be perfect, but it does a good job of showing that Jesus was 100% God, we know that, and was 100% human.

You would want to hang out with Jesus while he was here on earth.

Jesus was fun, and Jesus was funny, and in his sermons, all of the time he's using humor, and we miss it because so many of us have this view of Jesus like he is just stoic and serious all of the time.

Jesus is funny.

He says, Why are you looking at the splinter in your brother's eye when you have a beam of wood in your own?

And I can't actually do justice the contrast he's trying to draw, because the splinter would be a fraction of this size.

If I brought up an actual splinter, it would be so small you couldn't see it, you couldn't see it on camera.

Likewise, when he says a beam of wood, what that actually means in the Greek, I wouldn't be able to bring on stage because that would be something more like a telephone pole.

He's drawing like cartoonish contrast between something so small you can't see it and something so large that you can't hold it.

And he's making a very simple point.

That it's not hard for me to spot the small issues in your discernment.

But sometimes it's very difficult for me to spot the issues in my own.

And it's an even bigger problem because as we move to verse 42, he says, Why do you look at the splinter and you don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye?

Verse 42, or how can you say to your brother, let me take out the splinter that is in your eye when you yourself have a beam of wood in front of yours?

How can you find the tiny little splinter and go, hey, let me help you with that?

When you have a telephone pole blocking your view of things, this is about spiritual blindness, a lack of discernment.

This is a picture of like ancient eye surgery.

You have a splinter in your eye.

Let me help get it out.

There's one person who touches my eye, and that's my wife, okay?

Like several years ago, we were about to go on a trip, and I was gonna finish up a little project around the house first, and I was cutting down some wood with a miter saw, and a lot of a lot of dust comes out of a miter saw, and there was a piece of wood, um, not so small that I could easily flush it out, big enough that it got trapped in between my eye and my eyelid.

Uh I've already mentioned, I don't like eyelashes in my eye, okay?

I was freaking out, I could feel it scratching my cornea, and I couldn't get it out.

I tried, I just couldn't do it.

I had to go to the eye doctor to get them to go in and remove it.

Now that's fine, and I trust doctors, and you know, I was hoping that this would be a simple resolve, but uh imagine if they brought me back and they sat me in, they said the doctor will be with you soon.

And I thought, great, man, I gotta get this thing out of my eye.

And then the doctor knocked on the door and they walked in like this.

Imagine the doctor walks in with a seeing eye dog.

I'm gonna get a second opinion, okay?

Like I'm going down the road, I'm taking my business elsewhere.

For you to start digging in my eye, I need to be confident that you are seeing 2020 vision.

And yet, we do this all the time.

One of the things I mention this all the time, I love this about scripture.

Scripture does not tell a polished, whitewashed story, it tells the story of real people who God is using as a part of his plan.

And we see even the heroes of scripture all of the time able to spot the splinters in everyone else's eyes and unable to see the huge lack of discernment, the beam of wood in their own life.

We think about Jonah.

Jonah is best known for being swallowed up by a big fish, but long before he was swallowed up by that big fish, God had cracked through to our reality and spoken to Jonah like I'm speaking to you.

And he said, Hey, Nineveh is full of wickedness.

This nation does not know me.

And so, Jonah, I'm sending you there.

You will prophesy to Nineveh, you will spare them from my judgment.

And Jonah is unwilling.

What's happening is Jonah looks at the wickedness of the people of Nineveh, and it's easy for him to see the splinters.

It's like they don't know God and they worship false idols and they sacrifice their children, and they're terrible, and they're evil, and they're wicked.

As he runs from God.

And so let me just ask you a very simple legal question: Who is more culpable?

Someone who does not have a law and breaks that law, or someone who has delivered the law firsthand and breaks the law.

Jonah can spot the splinter, but he cannot see the beam.

As we were going through the Beatitudes, one of the examples we used was King David.

And the prophet Nathan came to King David and he said, Hey, listen, in the kingdom, there's a poor guy.

He's got one lamb, he loves it.

It's like a child to him.

And his next door neighbor is a very, very wealthy rancher.

He has like endless sheep.

And the wealthy rancher, he came next door and he stole the poor man's one lamb and he killed it and he fed it to his guests.

And David can see the splinter.

He's like, you know what we should do?

We should kill that guy.

Bring him in here.

I'll kill him myself.

I will put hands on this guy.

Let's go get it.

I can see the splinter.

And Nathan goes, You don't get it.

You're carrying a bean.

He stole one lamb.

You stole a man's wife, had the man killed, got her pregnant, and married her.

We just do this all of the time, and it's easy for us.

And we're a splinter spotting culture.

We're experts at spotting the splinter.

This is the majority of how we use social media now.

We're just like, can you believe they would wear this?

Can you you know they couldn't afford this?

How much debt did they go into to go on this vacation?

They they are not spending their money wisely while you're in twice as much debt as they are.

We're just judging splinters just all the time.

It's like, man, I tell you this right now.

They are not taking care of the temple of God.

We're on our third Krispy Kreme, like they are just not even.

Do they even go to the gym?

I don't.

We do this all of the time.

And uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna read your mail real quick.

I hate to do it, but I'm gonna read your mail real quick.

Have you ever watch a magic show and the mentalist comes up and they take you through a bunch of stuff, and then they go, and you're thinking of the number seven, and you're like, oh my gosh, I am thinking of the number seven.

I'm about to do that to you, okay?

At least 40% of you here at our venues have already thought this in today's sermon.

Wow, I know exactly who needs to hear this sermon.

If I can get my sibling to listen to this, man, do they need this sermon.

Man, I hope my adult child will tune in today.

I hope my spouse is listening to this sermon right now.

You know what you're doing?

You're spotting the splinter.

We're experts at this.

It's easy.

We're like looking at our kids like, I don't know how they have these anger issues.

Just like twice a week they're watching you throw crap around the house.

We are experts at spotting the splinter.

And we are often very, very, very bad at seeing the telephone pole that is blocking our own discernment.

And this is an issue, but we have to understand what the issue actually is.

What is this great threat to discernment, and how do we fix it so that we can begin to really see the world the way that God sees it, see reality, see our life, see our relationships, see our resources the way that God sees them.

Interestingly, Jesus is going to make a diagnosis.

He doesn't leave us hanging, he's gonna tell us exactly what this is.

In verse 42, he says, How can you say to your brother, let me take out the splinter that's in your eye when you don't see the beam of wood in your own eye?

You say it with me, hypocrites! I'm gonna make the case today that I think Jesus is making.

I think this is why he taught this.

Right after can the blind lead the blind?

And I think that the point is that hypocrisy is the greatest threat to discernment.

Hypocrisy is the greatest threat to discernment.

Even if you're doing the things we talked about last week, even if you're really seeking to be discipled by someone, you've put some accountability in your life, if you are stuck in hypocrisy, it will threaten your ability to grow in your discernment.

So, what is hypocrisy?

What's hard is all of our definitions have come from this world.

All of the way we think about things, this is the whole sermon that we've been in for like months now, is Jesus is going, you don't know how things work.

You don't understand reality, you don't know how life works, you don't know how you work, you don't know how relationship works, you don't know how money works.

Everything we think has been formed and informed by the kingdoms of this world.

And so I don't care how the culture defines hypocrisy.

If you come at me with, well, according to the Miriam Webster, I don't care.

The word rage bait is in the dictionary now, you know?

It's like I'm over it.

What I want to know is what Jesus meant when he said this.

When he calls this man a hypocrite.

It's worth noting.

There are two people.

One with a splinter, one with a beam.

Whether it's a splinter or a beam, it is something blocking their vision and keeping them from having discernment.

Both of them have an issue.

Jesus isn't mad that you spotted the splinter.

We need that.

We need to hold each other accountable.

But only one is called a hypocrite.

The one who can't see the problem in their own life.

Here's what culture tells us hypocrisy is.

Very simple definition from the culture.

Hypocrisy is believing one thing and doing another.

And this is why Christians in our culture are labeled hypocrite all the time.

Because we are in the information age, and even those outside of the faith know a lot about what Christians believe.

Even people outside of the faith usually know quite a few of the teachings of Jesus.

And so they go, hey man, Christians are supposed to love their neighbor, and you weren't very loving yesterday.

Hypocrite.

Christians are supposed to be generous.

And you seem rather stingy, hypocrite.

The problem is, this isn't what hypocrisy means.

Hypocrisy is not just believing one thing and doing another.

That is not called hypocrisy.

That is called inconsistency.

And unfortunately for you, and unfortunately for me, inconsistency is a part of what makes us human.

We are inconsistent beings.

I am an inconsistent being.

I believe with my whole heart that as a husband, I should selflessly and sacrificially love my wife, and if you catch me on the wrong day, I am selfish and complacent in my marriage.

And I believe, I believe what I believe.

And at times I am inconsistent.

Here's what we believe as Christians: not that we just shouldn't do degenerate things, but that we should even avoid things like lust, allowing them in our mind and our heart.

And I don't know if you've noticed, but the temptation towards lust is like everywhere all the time.

And even though we genuinely believe we should avoid it, sometimes we fall into it.

And we are inconsistent.

And inconsistency is an issue, but I need you to understand what Jesus means when he says hypocrite.

And so if you're taking notes, this is important.

Falling short of a sincerely held belief may not be hypocrisy.

Now it might be, we'll talk about that.

But falling short of a sincerely held belief may not be hypocrisy, but it is inconsistency.

And we are inconsistent beings.

It plagues us as fallible, sinful, broken humans in a fallen, broken, sinful world.

Now let me just hit pause real quick before I move forward and let you know what my sermon is not.

My sermon today is not: hey, you're really inconsistent, that's fine.

Oh, you're like sinning all of the time.

No big deal.

That's not my sermon.

My sermon is just helping you understand what hypocrisy is and what hypocrisy is not.

If you are stuck in a pattern of inconsistency, a pattern of sin, a pattern of rebellion, then part of being in the body of Christ is doing something about that.

Confessing your sins first to the Lord, who you've offended with your sin.

Confessing your sin to the person who you have sinned against and seeking their forgiveness.

Confessing your sin to those who are discipling you, which means you need to be discipled, which means you need Christian community, which means you might need to be on a life team so that people can hold you accountable and resource you and break you free from that pattern of inconsistency so you can live to the glory of God.

Amen.

This is not permission toward sin.

This is an acknowledgement that we are sinful and we are inconsistent.

And just because you're inconsistent does not mean you are a hypocrite.

This is like an easy weapon to use against Christianity because we all fall short of God's standards.

It doesn't mean we don't genuinely believe in those standards.

It means that we struggle often to reach them.

What did Jesus mean?

In the New Testament, it is written in ancient Koine Greek.

The word hypocrite is the Greek word upocritos.

It did not mean a Christian who struggles to meet their beliefs.

It did not mean someone who believes one thing and does another.

When Jesus used this word, it had one very clear meaning, and everyone who heard Jesus say this would have understood that meaning.

Hypocrite meant someone who is an actor in a play.

That is what the word literally meant.

An actor in a play.

In other words, a hypocrite is someone pretending to be something that they're not.

It's Jesus who comes in and right here in this moment in scripture applies this moral force, this moral angle to what it means to be a hypocrite.

And all Jesus is doing is trying to help us understand what it means to actually live for the kingdom of God.

And isn't it interesting that Sunday after Sunday, year after year, you come in, and I remind you, we're not here to play games.

We are not here to put on our nice little Christian mask and pretend that we're something we're not.

We are here to humble ourselves before the Lord.

Warts and all, mistakes and all, skeletons and all of the closets, so that we can have true transformative work happen through the Holy Spirit into our lives.

Jesus calls this man a hypocrite, not because he's an expert at spotting someone else's splinter, but because he's pretending like his beam of wood doesn't exist.

Here's what this might look like in your real life.

You have a pattern of inconsistency, and you have heard about it.

Most of our patterns develop very young.

The same issues that are plaguing you right now in your 40s were present when you were nine.

They look different in different seasons and they expand in their usage over time.

But our patterns typically come from very early in life and they develop, which means you have probably heard about this pattern in your life from your parents, teachers, coaches, friends.

You heard about it while you were dating, as they were breaking up with you.

They said, I really like you and you're really handsome, but unfortunately, you have a pattern where you're very inconsistent.

You hear about this from your coworkers, you've heard about it from your boss, you heard about it from your circle of friends that you used to have and you don't have those friends anymore because they pointed out your inconsistency and you weren't willing to hear it.

One of the greatest gifts that God gives us is a spouse, because a spouse gets a front row seat to our inconsistencies.

They know your patterns better than anyone else, and please listen, they know your patterns maybe better than you.

We often have blind spots.

And for so many of us, we have thrown aside the greatest gift of a spouse who could come in and help correct the inconsistencies that are blinding us from being able to see what God actually has for us in this life.

My first several years of marriage, I played the cultural marriage game.

You correct me, I get defensive.

You bring up something I didn't do, I pull out the list of all the things I did do.

Hey, I asked you to do this and you didn't get it done, and so now it has caused a problem.

Oh, well, you didn't even mention that I woke up early and I cooked the breakfast and I brought the kids and I did the thing, and three years ago I bought you a flower.

You didn't mention any of that.

That's what's natural.

That's our instinct.

Insecure, defensive.

What are we doing?

Someone comes and points out an inconsistency that if you would be willing to grow and give that to the Lord, you have no idea how the Lord could use you.

And as soon as they point it out, you go, Well, you you've got a splinter in your eye.

I haven't even said anything about it, but you have a thing too.

I'm gonna tell you about it right now.

This is a real problem.

And this is where hypocrisy comes in.

It's a pattern, and you know about it.

Everyone who loves you enough to tell you has told you about it, and you just pretend it's not there.

Now we're a hypocrite.

It's not just inconsistency, it's inconsistency that's been pointed out that we refuse to acknowledge and we refuse to change.

Let me give you a definition.

Hypocrisy is refusing to acknowledge your own blindness.

And just kind of a pro tip as long as you're critiquing people like this, they're not going to listen to you.

We have to deal with this first.

And this is what Jesus tells us to do.

So he gave us a diagnosis.

If you're living like this, you're a hypocrite.

Here's the prescription.

Verse 42 Jesus says, first, take the beam of wood out of your eye, and only then will you see clearly enough to take out the splinter in their eye.

If I were gonna give you like a bottom line today, disciples of Christ go first.

We confess first, we repent first, we make amends first, we deal with ourselves first.

This is called humility because the beam that you're carrying that is limiting your vision, everyone who loves you sees it.

And the people who really actually love you have tried to call you out on it.

Your boss sees it, your coworkers see it, your spouse sees it, your friends see it.

As your kids get older, your kids see it.

And it's one thing to be inconsistent, it's another to be inconsistent and unwilling to change.

And after 10 years of trying to point this out, your family isn't gonna talk to you about it anymore.

They're gonna talk about you behind you as they watch this one thing in your life hold you back from your potential.

Heartbroken for you.

We tried.

We don't know what else to do.

This is so hard because anytime conflict comes, we get insecure and we get defensive.

Anytime someone critiques us, evaluates us, the people who we love, even, who we should give that permission to, as soon as they point out, we want to point out a splinter.

We just deflect and project.

And as long as we can deflect and project, we can pretend like our problem isn't there.

And now we're a hypocrite.

And so let me give you advice that very few people will apply because it's so freaking hard.

But if you were to apply it, it will change your life, it will bulletproof your relationships, it could heal your marriage, it could strengthen your bond with your parent.

Start with you.

Start with you, and do not come off of you until you are confident the beam is gone.

Now, I do not do this perfectly.

Uh, you catch me on the wrong day, and I do it very poorly, and I'm an expert just like you at spotting splinters and deflecting and projecting.

But man, when I do this well, the results are unbelievable.

Whether it is at work, with my kids, or with Katie, the results are unbelievable.

I'm talking about tension that could have lasted a week, it is resolved in 20 minutes, and it's not zero.

We've taken steps forward, we've reinforced a relationship, we've expanded our love.

Students, your parents correct you.

I know this, and I know what you're thinking.

They're wrong.

And you're probably supposed to think that because you're growing older and you're becoming independent and you're learning a lot of things, but God has given you your parents.

And your parents have a front row seat to your life, and they have known you for all of your life, and they do see your patterns.

And as parents, we don't always approach you perfectly.

Sometimes you're like, I didn't like that tone, and that was the wrong time, and I was going through a lot.

And you know what?

We're sorry for all of that.

We're not gonna get it perfect, but we see patterns, and we know those patterns could become real problems as you become an adult.

And so we come and we confront and we point out inconsistencies and we point out patterns, and you get defensive.

And on the other side of the equation, what you want is freedom, responsibility, opportunity.

So, students, let me help you.

When your parents correct you, you're gonna feel defensive, but you are more than your emotions.

We don't move off instinct, we move off God's instructions.

And so when your parents correct you, start with you.

And if your parents come in and go, hey, this is the 50-11th time we've talked about this, and you're still doing it, what you need to say is, hey, help me understand.

I don't know why I do this.

Tell me what it looks like.

Tell me what I'm causing.

Tell me what you need from me.

Help me think of a way to do something different next time.

Start with you.

Students, if you do this for two months, your parents are gonna be like, what can I buy you?

Where would you like to go?

We'll do anything.

And you will get better and you will learn.

Because God's given you these parents to help you.

Spouses, start with you.

You will not want to.

You will feel defensiveness.

You know when someone like confronts you and they point out the beam in your own eye, and your heart starts beating so hard, you can like hear your blood somehow, you know?

You like the world goes tunnel vision, and you have to fight that, man.

You're not a dolphin, you are more than instinct, you are made in the image of God.

You can follow his instructions when it's hard.

And you can just say, help me understand what you're saying.

Tell me what that felt like.

Tell me what that caused.

I want to understand what it caused.

Give me it, give me like an example of when I've done this before.

Help me out of this.

I want to love you well.

That's why I married you.

Help me be better, help me get this beam out of my eye.

Help me see you the way that God sees you.

And start with you and stay with you until the beam is gone.

And it's not like an equation I can give you necessarily on when that will happen.

You'll know.

Preferably, I would like both people in a marriage to do this.

I would like you and your coworker to do this.

I would like your boss to do this and you to do it back.

I'd like for you and your kids to do it.

But it only takes one.

If one person will do this, relationships will heal.

Here's what I have to do.

I've already told you our first several years of marriage, I did not do this well.

I was incredibly insecure, and I was very defensive.

And so through the years, when conflict comes, and I can tell this great gift that God has given me in a spouse who can help me grow, is hesitant to point out an inconsistency.

I just have to apologize.

The reason they're hesitant is because they tried for years and I bit their head off.

And so you may have to start with an apology, and you may have to build enough trust for the people in your life who love you to help you.

For those who are married in this room, man, you have no greater gift than a spouse, and no one should be able to help you grow like your spouse because nobody knows you like your spouse.

They know your potential, they know your power, they understand who you are, and they know your inconsistencies, and they know your broken patterns, and they can help you if you're willing to start with you.

Here's what's hard, and we just have to come to terms with.

You're not going to get away from inconsistency on this side of heaven.

Someday, either you will breathe your last and you'll be standing in the presence of Jesus, or you'll live long enough to see Jesus crack the sky and come and get his people, and we will all pass through the fire of the judgment seat of Christ.

We will be perfected through that fire, we will be given glorified bodies, sin will not touch us anymore, and we will finally be completely consistent.

And until then, you're not getting away from inconsistency.

So let me give you some actual equations.

Discipleship.

Discipleship is inconsistency plus humility.

The way you will learn and grow is through screwing things up and being humble enough for your spouse, for the person discipling you, for your supervisor, for your parents, for your friends, yes, even your children at times, to point out your inconsistency.

And you'll start with you and you'll stay with you until that beam is out of your eye.

You can't get away from inconsistency, but you can choose humility, and humility is where discipleship comes from.

Peter was incredibly inconsistent.

But through his failures, Christ would restore.

And he wouldn't bring him back to zero.

He would bring him leaps and bounds ahead of where he was.

Because his inconsistency plus his humility allowed him to be discipled.

Hypocrisy also involves inconsistency.

But it is inconsistency plus hubris.

Pride is at the root of our hypocrisy.

And when God has tried to convict us of our patterns, and your spouse has tried to bring you your patterns, and your boss, you lost another job because of this pattern, you lost another marriage because of this pattern, your kids won't talk to you because of this pattern, and you just stand there with the beam in your life, going, everyone else must be wrong.

Pretending a problem isn't there.

Pretending you're something you're not.

Pretending that you have the moral and spiritual clarity to point out other people's faults when you are unwilling to deal with the pattern in your own life.

You're not going to get away from inconsistency, but you can choose humility or hubris.

One leads to discipleship, a life lived on purpose, and with purpose, unimaginable power.

And one leads to blindness, devastation, disappointment.

And so let's just get real.

When is the last time that someone corrected you and your response was to thank them?

You talk about our culture, that is like the most counter-cultural.

When is the last time that someone pointed something out in your life, evaluated you, and you thanked them?

How many people even feel permission to point out your inconsistencies?

Because maybe they tried once or twice and you bit their head off.

You made clear, I'm not interested in you questioning this pattern in my life.

On the other side of that, when is the last time that you pointed out a splinter in someone else's life?

What's the equation?

Because if we're honest, probably for every 15,000 splinters we point out in someone else's life, maybe we allow someone to critique us once.

It's time to change those numbers.

I believe that God has a role for you, and part of your role as you grow in your discernment is gonna be to pull brothers and sisters aside, not behind their back to their face, and go, hey, I see this pattern in your life.

I don't think it's good for you.

I think God put us in a relationship so I can help you.

But you gotta start with you.

There might be some of us here at our venues or with us online, and you've never taken the first step of coming into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

And what's worth noting is Jesus is the one human to ever walk planet earth who never had a beam and never had a splinter.

He was actually perfect.

Had perfect discernment.

Which means he's the one person who, without apology, could come to every one of us and just drop the hammer.

Judge, condemn, marginalize, ostracize, punish.

Disciples of Christ, we start with us.

And all we're doing is following the example of Christ Himself.

Who did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to give his life for the world, to take the punishment that I deserve, to take the cross that you deserve.

He started with himself so that he could bring us into relationship.

If you've never had a moment in your life where you have intentionally decided to put your faith in Jesus, that is your first step today.

And the dire warning of Scripture is that God loves you so much, but it is our sin that separates us from God now and forever if we do not bridge that gap.

And that doesn't come through your work, your effort, your tradition, your religion, your consistency.

That comes through the work that Jesus did on your behalf, and all he asks for is your faith.

Believing that Jesus is who he claimed to be and has accomplished what he claims to have done.

And scripture says, at the moment of faith, your sins that separate you from God are forgiven, all of them, and you are brought into an everlasting relationship with your heavenly Father.

Amen.

If you're here and you've never had that moment in time, time is of the essence.

You are not promised tomorrow.

It is likely that even right now the Spirit of God is pressing in on you, drawing you into relationship with your Heavenly Father.

And so let's get that right as we close service across our venues.

If you'd pray with me, just bow your heads, close your eyes, create a little bit of space.

If I'm describing you, you know there's never been a moment in time where you have decided for yourself that your only hope for this life is Jesus.

And your only hope for whatever comes next is Jesus.

If that's you and you're ready to have that moment of faith right now, I want to ask you, with everyone's eyes closed, to just simply raise your hand right where you're sitting.

Raising your hand is not magic, it's just a symbolic gesture that says, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

As hands go up around the room, I want you to know that God sees your faith.

Scripture says, accepts your faith, forgives all of your sins right now, forever forgiven.

And right now you've been brought into a relationship with God, given the gift of eternal life that no one and nothing can take away from you.

And all I want to do is help you acknowledge this moment.

So if you raise your hand, I'm gonna ask you to repeat a prayer with me.

I'm gonna ask all believers across venues to pray with me as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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